So, You Are Colorblind and Treat Everybody the Same -- White Fragility Lip Service

Talk of racial reform sticks in the craw of many white Americans. These whites’ conceptions of racism now view anti-white bias as a bigger societal problem than anti-black bias. Whites believe that they have replaced blacks as the primary victims of racial discrimination in contemporary America, according to a study from researchers at Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Business School (2011).

Samuel Sommers and Michael I. Norton, co-authors of the study conclude …

"These data are the first to demonstrate that not only do whites think more progress has been made toward equality than do blacks, but whites also now believe that this progress is linked to a new inequality – at their expense.”

(Samuel Sommers and Michael I. Norton. "Whites See Racism as a Zero-sum Game that They Are Now Losing." Perspectives on Psychological Science. May 2011.)

The usage of “reverse racism” and “reverse discrimination” arose in direct response to affirmative and race-based policies in the 1970s. Reverse racism – or any race-conscious policy – became a common grievance that helped shape a certain post-civil-rights-movement view of America where black people were the favored children of the state and deserving white people were cast aside.

Some studies even claim that white belief in reverse racism has steadily increased since the civil-rights movement and, in their view, has become the dominant racial bias in America. This trend parallels the rise of Donald Trump, as a 2016 HuffPost/YouGov poll found that Trump voters think anti-white discrimination is a much more prevalent problem than is discrimination against any minority group. In that poll, forty-five percent of Trump voters think white people in the U.S. face a lot of discrimination. Just 22 percent, however, think that black Americans face a lot of discrimination, and just 19 percent say the same of Jews and Latinos.

The evidence is clear: a substantial number of whites don’t welcome social progress – they actually respond by seeing themselves as victims of discrimination. While whites currently comprise the majority of the U.S. population, recent census projections suggest that within the next several decades, whites will become a numerical minority.

Research posits that when whites are alerted to this trend, they are more likely to fear being discriminated against …

“Indeed, in nearly every important domain of American life, including health, education, criminal justice, and wealth, substantial racial disparities (favoring Whites) continue to persist and discrimination has been found to contribute to these gaps. The present findings reveal the underlying psychological processes through which the growing racial diversity of the nation may unwittingly make it increasingly difficult to address these troubling disparities and cultivate a nation that is both diverse and just.”

(MA Craig and JA Richeson. Information about the US racial demographic shift triggers concerns about anti-White discrimination among the prospective White “minority.”

PLoS ONE 12(9). 2017.)

Systemic racism is less about violence or burning crosses. Systemic racism refers to how ideas of white superiority are captured in everyday thinking at a systems level: taking in the big picture of how society operates, rather than looking at one-on-one interactions.

Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has said: "The main problem nowadays is not the folks with the hoods, but the folks dressed in suits." The reality is that systemic racism persists in our schools, offices, court system, police departments, and elsewhere. It must be noted that greater attention to bias against whites (and less to bias against racial minorities) only exacerbates social inequality.

“Reverse racism is a cogent description of affirmative action only if one considers the cancer of racism to be morally and medically indistinguishable from the therapy we apply to it.”

– Stanley Fish, American literary theorist and legal scholar,

Blacks' feelings of anger and fear are justified as so many whites just don't “get” systemic racism in America. Robin J. DiAngelo – American academic, lecturer, and author (a white liberal, by the way) – says there is a “white fragility,” a discomfort and defensiveness on the part of a white person when confronted by information about racial inequality and injustice.

DiAngelo encounters a lot of “certitude from white people (about racism) – they insist ‘Well, it’s not me’ or say ‘I’m doing my best, what do you want from me?’ ”

DiAngelo says this fragility leads to white people “weaponizing [their] hurt feelings” and being indignant and defensive when confronted with racial inequality and injustice. This creates a climate where the suggestion or accusation of racism causes more outrage among white people than the racism itself. She asks …

“And if nobody is racist, why is racism still America’s biggest problem? What are white people afraid they will lose by listening? What is so threatening about humility on this topic? We have to stop thinking about racism simply as someone who says the N-word … in the white western colonial context … white people hold institutional power.”

(Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard

for White People to Talk About Racism. 2018.)

In her more than twenty years of running diversity-training and cultural-competency workshops for American companies, DiAngelo has noticed that “white people are sensationally, histrionically bad at discussing racism.” DiAngelo explains …

“Like waves on sand, their reactions form predictable patterns: they will insist that they 'were taught to treat everyone the same,' that they are 'color-blind,' that they 'don’t care if you are pink, purple, or polka-dotted.' They will point to friends and family members of color, a history of civil-rights activism, or a more 'salient' issue, such as class or gender. They will shout and bluster. They will cry.”

To DiAngelo, the largely segregated American society insulates whites from racial discomfort, so that they fall to pieces at the first application of stress – for instance, when someone suggests that “flesh-toned” may not be an appropriate name for a beige crayon. Unused to unpleasantness (racial hierarchies tell white people that they are entitled to peace and deference), they lack the “racial stamina” to engage in difficult conversations. This leads them to respond to “racial triggers” with “emotions such as anger, fear and guilt and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation.”

Racism uses prejudice to reproduce a systematic disadvantage of power based on race. And, let's face it white America, combating one’s inner voices of racial prejudice is a life’s work, not merely color-blind lip service. White supremacy is still infusing itself – often subtly and invisibly – through media and culture and politics. What is the white complicity? Perhaps the answer to that question should be addressed in the context of why it is so difficult for white people to talk about racism.

“When you believe niceness disproves the presence of racism, it's easy to start believing bigotry is rare, and that the label 'racist' should be applied only to mean-spirited, intentional acts of discrimination.”

– Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: 
Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

Black Children Face Trauma, Violence, and Adversity

“Children in most societies are considered to be in a distinct group with characteristics such as innocence and the need for protection. Our research found that black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent.”

– Phillip Atiba Goff, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Can white Americans even imagine the stress associated with being a member of a minority? Consider the children. Research by the American Psychological Association has shown that black boys as young as 10 may not be viewed in the same light of childhood innocence as their white peers, but are instead more likely to be mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty, and face police violence if accused of a crime.

Phillip Atiba Goff, PhD, “The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Feb. 24, 2014.

What do these black children experience as they develop attitudes and practices? After all, they are at higher risk of death and injury at hands of law enforcement. Parents of black children thus live with significant fear for their children’s safety, and the stress felt by the children is often toxic.

The danger black children face can cause ongoing fear and anger, which manifests in a variety of ways that are detrimental to well-being – these children are especially vulnerable to the psychological and physical effects of police brutality and the threat thereof because of their developmental stages.

That threat of death is real and ongoing. In 2017, a study found that police killed 1,147 people, and that black people made up 25% of this number. However, black people only made up 13% of the population at the time, meaning this population is overrepresented.

In addition to this, 30% of black victims were unarmed, compared to 21% of white victims. The report concluded that black people are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people. The 2017 Police Violence Report found that, “black people were more likely to be killed by police, more likely to be unarmed and less likely to be threatening someone when killed.”

Mapping Police Violence. (2017). Mapping Police Violence. Retrieved May 5, 2019, from https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

Effects of Police Killings

Reactions to police killings are overwhemingly traumatic. Research confirms that police killings in the residential environment can trigger acute stress with negative consequences. Police killings evoke grief, collective anger, and hopelessness linked to perceived interpersonal discrimination in the form of unequal treatment by the police based on race and ethnicity. They are seen as a manifestation of structural racism or a broader system of laws, policies, and practices that maintain hierarchies and oppress racial minorities.

S. Alang, D. McAlpine, E. McCreedy, R. Hardeman, Police brutality and black health: Setting the agenda for public health scholars. Am. J. Public Health 107, 662–665 (2017).

The trauma, anxiety, hopelessness, and fear about future police encounters are all stressors. Accordingly, exposure to police killings in the residential environment or through news reports can trigger acute stress, which are more pronounced for police killings of unarmed victims perceived as unjustified.

P. Braveman, K. Heck, S. Egerter, P. Dominguez, C. Rinki, K. S. Marchi, M. Curtis, Worry about racial discrimination: A missing piece of the puzzle of Black-White disparities in preterm birth? PLOS ONE 12,e0186151 (2017).

Recent research demonstrates some of these negative consequences of police killings and aggressive policing more broadly. Aggressive policing also has been found to affect the health of individuals. Findings revealed that men who reported having more police contact, which was most often intrusive and unfair, also reported more symptoms of trauma and anxiety.

For example, Bor et al. show that police killings negatively affect mental health among black Americans. Related work documents the effect of police killings and aggressive forms of policing on educational outcomes, stress, and other health outcomes of black youth.

J. Bor, A. S. Venkataramani, D. R. Williams, A. C. Tsai, Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans: A population-based, quasi-experimental study. Lancet 392, 302–310 (2018)

500. Ang, The Effects of Police Violence on Inner-City Students, 75 (2018).

A study conducted by Kathy Sanders-Phillips (2009) investigated the impact that racial discrimination has on the development and functioning of African American children. Sanders-Phillips presented theoretical frameworks, analyzed levels of exposure to racial discrimination among children of color, examined the effects that discrimination has on children’s psychological functioning, and considered the impact that racial discrimination has on parenting behaviors and community support.

An overall model was developed, which shows that children experience racial discrimination at personal and institutional levels. Once racial discrimination is experienced, children develop perceptions of threat, fear, victimization, low self-efficacy, low self-esteem, and hopelessness, which then lead to problems with depression, anxiety, and anger … problems that intensify over lifetimes.

Sanders-Phillips, K. (2009). Racial Discrimination: A Continuum of Violence Exposure for Children of Color. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 12(2), 174-195.

Stress negatively affects childbirth. For black women who are pregnant, this exposure and related stress can shorten the length of gestation, affect birth weight, and increase the risk of other adverse health outcomes.

A. Premkumar, O. Nseyo, A. V. Jackson, Connecting police violence with reproductive health. Obstet. Gynecol. 129, 153–156 (2017).

The likely biological mechanism linking acute, environmental stressors during pregnancy, such as police violence in the residential environment, to birth outcomes is based on increased production of placental corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH).

P. Braveman, K. Heck, S. Egerter, T. P. Dominguez, C. Rinki, K. S. Marchi, M. Curtis, Worry about racial discrimination: A missing piece of the puzzle of Black-White disparities in preterm birth? PLOS ONE 12,e0186151 (2017).

J. W. Collins Jr.., R. J. David, A. Handler, S. Wall, S. Andes , Very low birthweight in African American infants: The role of maternal exposure to interpersonal racial discrimination. Am. J. Public Health 94,2132–2138 (2004).

To Summarize

Beginning in infancy (even before), black, lower social class children are more likely to have strong, frequent, or prolonged exposure to major traumatic events, the frightening or threatening conditions that induce a stress response. This stress continues throughout their lifetime. Such stress can become toxic when “the events or conditions precipitating it are severely frightening or threatening – especially when they are sustained or frequently repeated – and when protective factors are insufficient to mitigate the stress to tolerable levels.”

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) recently issued a report on the impact of poverty, racial and social class on toxic stress. The report found that black children were 21% more likely to have been exposed to three or more frightening or stressful experiences. These children may also have less access to protective resources that can help reduce the effects of toxic stress, thereby exacerbating the effects.

Leila Morsy and Richard Rothstein, Toxic stress and children’s outcomes, Economic policy institute, May 1, 2019.

Violence is a chronic, recurrent problem. And, racism intensifies the toxic stress of poverty. Clearly trauma plays a powerful role in feeding the cycle of violence for all victims and, especially, for those who disproportionately live in neighborhoods marked by poverty.

Despite the tendency to focus on homicide as the prime indicator of violence, it is only the tip of the iceberg. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that for every homicide there are 94 nonfatal violent injuries. Available data confirms African Americans, and African American males in particular, are disproportionately affected by nonfatal assault. In 2013, black males between the ages of 10 and 25 suffered nearly three times the rate of nonfatal assaults as similarly aged white males.

John Rich, MD, MPH, Moving Toward Healing: Trauma and Violence and Boys and Young Men of Color, Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice at Drexel University, 2016.

Trauma, violence, adversity – what is the reality, especially for boys and young men of color? They believe the police are not there to protect them. Instead, they view the police as victimizers, and they are reluctant to cooperate with these authorities for fear of being seen as “snitches.” In addition, traumatized young black people feel constantly in danger and sometimes turn to weapons or membership in gangs and other groups as a means of self-protection. The circle of fear and anguish perpetuates itself.

Rich, J.A., Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men. 2009: JHU Press.

Structural Racism and Fatal Police Shootings of Unarmed Victims

Structural Racism in the United States is defined as “the normalization and legitimization of an array of dynamics – historical, cultural, institutional and interpersonal – that routinely advantage whites while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color.”

Structural racism is a system of hierarchy and inequity, primarily characterized by white supremacy – the preferential treatment, privilege and power for white people at the expense of Black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Arab and other racially oppressed people.

Key indicators of structural racism are inequalities in power, access, opportunities, treatment, and policy impacts and outcomes, whether they are intentional or not. It involves the reinforcing effects of multiple institutions and cultural norms, past and present, continually producing new, and re-producing old forms of racism.

A study led by School of Public Health researchers (2018) found states with a greater degree of structural racism, particularly residential segregation, have higher racial disparities in fatal police shootings of unarmed victims.

The association between levels of structural racism and the racial disparity in the shooting of unarmed victims by police held even after controlling for the rate of arrests of black individuals in a state, and for the overall rate of fatal police shootings of black victims.

The study suggests that this police shootings are not simply about the actions of individuals, but about the actions of all of society. The researchers are hopeful that reframing this from an individual to a societal problem will pave the way for a meaningful discussion about institutional racism. Study co-author Anita Knopov, a pre-doctoral fellow at SPH, reports …

“This suggests that the higher rates of fatal police shootings of unarmed black victims are not merely a result of more interactions between police officers and black suspects. Instead, our results indicate that in some states there is a systematically different response based on the race of the suspect.”

Aldina Mesic B.S. Et al, The Relationship Between Structural Racism and Black-White Disparities in Fatal Police Shootings at the State Level. Journal of the National Medical Association, Volume 110, Issue 2, April 2018, Pages 106-116

Surprisingly, the study revealed the highest black-white ratios of police killings are concentrated in the Midwest, as are broader disparities in outcomes and living conditions like segregation and economic status. Among the states with the highest disparities in black versus white shooting victims and the highest racism index scores are Wisconsin and Illinois — home, respectively, to Milwaukee and Chicago, two of the most segregated cities in the country.

The study also found that overall, unarmed black civilians are more than four and a half times more likely to be shot dead by the police than unarmed white civilians. The data also includes instances in which law enforcement maintains a victim was armed at the time of a shooting, even when that fact is disputed – which could mean a potential undercount in the rate of police shootings of the unarmed victims.

Structural racism has deep roots. Racial differentiation has been created, and is constantly being re-created, to serve a social and or economic purpose. It is maintained through social, legal and political controls (from slavery to Jim Crow laws to ghettoization to uses of ‘law and order’ and the criminal justice system, restrictive immigration policies, etc.). 

We must examine the modern existence of this racism and vow to attack its core causes, not simply keep score of injustice after injustice. Society needs a wake-up call to action, not another reaction with fleeting regrets.   

“Systemic and structural injustice is violence. What we often look at is the violence that erupts on the streets. Well, that’s a response to the violent lives in which people have been forced to live. That’s what we have to begin to do – to look at the systemic and structural racism, period, which means dismantling some of these things, changing laws, changing policies, etc. So that’s one level.

“And then we talk about this sort of collective consciousness and what happens when, as President Obama put it, Johnny and Jamal go to apply for a job. And we know the likelihood is that Johnny is going to get it and not Jamal. We have to look at that.

– Kelly Brown Douglas, African-American Episcopal priest

Blacks Risk Greater Death From Police Violence -- Statistics and Solutions

“Police in the United States kill far more people than do police in other

advanced industrial democracies. While a substantial body of evidence

shows that people of color, especially African Americans, are at greater

risk for experiencing criminal justice contact and police-involved harm

than are whites, we lack basic estimates of the prevalence of police-involved

deaths, largely due to the absence of definitive official data.”

(J. Lartey. “By the numbers: US police kill more in days than other countries do in years.” The Guardian. June 9, 2015.)

Lack of Confidence

Does law enforcement have the trust of those they serve? How you answer that question may depend largely on the color of your skin. While white Americans tend to have “a great deal of confidence” in law enforcement, the black/Latino-white divide on attitudes towards the police remains deep and wide.

Half of whites say they have confidence in the police to gain the trust of those they serve compared with only 22 percent of blacks. Whites are much more likely than blacks or Latinos to say their experience with the police has been “mostly good.”

(McClatchy-Marist Poll. “Ferguson and Beyond: Race Permeates Views of Law Enforcement.” December 15, 2014.)

Rich Morin, a pollster and senior editor for Pew Research Center, reports findings in a survey (2016) that show a great divide in confidence – only 33 percent of African Americans said police do “a good or excellent job of using the right amount of force in each encounter” compared to the 75 percent of white Americans who believed in the judgment of police.

“Blacks and whites live in two very different worlds with two very different worldviews on a variety of issues. One of those areas is police,” Morin said in 2016.

Research Supports Risks

Statistics show police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States. People of color face a higher likelihood of being killed by police than do white men and women. That risk peaks in young adulthood, and men of color face a nontrivial lifetime risk of being killed by police.

Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police. Risk of being killed by police peaks between the ages of 20 years and 35 years for men and women and for all racial and ethnic groups. Black women and men and American Indian and Alaska Native women and men are significantly more likely than white women and men to be killed by police. Latino men are also more likely to be killed by police than are white men.

(Frank Edwards, Hedwig Lee, and Michael Esposito. “Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex.” 

PNAS. August 20, 2019.)

Police killings – which can include shootings, choking and other uses of force – are the sixth-leading cause of death among men of all races ages 25-29, according to a study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.

According to Frank Edwards, lead researcher of the study and an assistant professor at the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, the numbers “may be an undercount.” Edwards cites other research that shows “stop and frisk” and aggressive policing can affect both mental and physical health. Edwards concludes …

“There’s clear evidence that shows the harmful and distinct ways police violence expands inequality. Policing plays a key role in maintaining structural inequalities between people of color and white people in the United States.”

A January 2015 report published in the Harvard Public Health Review, “Trends in U.S. Deaths due to Legal Intervention among Black and White men, Age 15-34 Years, by County Income Level: 1960-2010,” suggests persistent differences in risks for “violent encounters with police”:

“The rate ratio for black vs. white men for death due to legal intervention always exceeded 2.5 (median: 4.5) and ranged from 2.6 (95 percent confidence interval [CI] 2.1, 3.1) in 2001 to 10.1 (95 percent CI 8.7, 11.7) in 1969, with the relative and absolute excess evident in all county income quintiles.”

Why do some experts fear matters may actually be much worse? There exists an absence of good, official data. A March 2015 report from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) concludes that the current Arrest-Related Death (ARD) program – which aims to track persons who die in custody in America at the state level – typically only counts “about half, at best, of all deaths in police custody, and the coverage rate may be as low as 36 percent.”

The Bureau report also finds victims are majority white (52%) but disproportionately black (32%) with “a fatality rate 2.8 times higher among blacks than whites.” Most victims were reported to be armed (83%); however, “black victims were more likely to be unarmed (14.8%) than white (9.4%) or Hispanic (5.8%) victims.”

(Sarah DeGue, PhD,1 Katherine A. Fowler, PhD,1 and Cynthia Calkins,

PhD2. “Deaths Due to Use of Lethal Force by Law Enforcement.”

Am J Prev Med. Nov 2016.)

What do these statistics say about the links between structural racism – both within a police department and throughout society – and police violence. The first study to examine the relationship between structural racism and racial disparities in fatal police shootings at the state level, published in the Journal of the National Medical Association (2018), finds “states with a greater degree of structural racism, particularly residential segregation, have higher racial disparities in fatal police shootings of unarmed victims.”

Senior author Michael Siegel, professor of community health sciences, reports:

“States that have higher rates of racial segregation, incarceration, educational attainment, economic disparity, and unemployment tend to have higher levels of police violence against African Americans.”

(Michael Siegel et al. “The Relationship Between Structural Racism and Black-White Disparities in Fatal Police Shootings at the State Level.” Journal of the National Medical Association. Volume 110, Issue 2, April 2018.)

What Is the Solution?

Why does American law enforcement “as a system” find unarmed nonwhite civilians threatening enough to shoot and kill more often than unarmed whites? That is a question which begs an honest answer. Just consider these figures from 2015:

* Police killed at least 104 unarmed black people in 2015, nearly twice each week.

* Nearly 1 in 3 black people killed by police in 2015 were identified as unarmed, though the actual number is likely higher due to underreporting

* 36% of unarmed people killed by police were black in 2015 despite black people being only 13% of the U.S. population

* Unarmed black people were killed at 5x the rate of unarmed whites in 2015

(“Mapping Police Violence.” U.S. Census. 2014.)

Abigail Sewell, a sociologist at Emory University, believes part of the solution may be to reduce unnecessary police contact in the first place. Programs that help young men of color find jobs might help keep them off the streets and away from cops. If unnecessary police contact were eliminated, she said, the incidence of fatal police violence might be lower – and racial disparities might be diminished too.

“But I’m not sure if the disparities would disappear altogether,” Sewell says. “These women and these men … are living in neighborhoods that are overpoliced, where the police are very brutal in the way they treat citizens.”

Living in a state of constant fear can lead to chronic stress. Perhaps mental health professionals could be called upon to address psychiatric issues instead of asking police to do so, since they typically do not have training for such tasks.

Retired Police Maj. Neill Franklin highlights the need for cultural and logistical shifts in policing. He points to the “war on drugs” waged by the federal government as an example.

That campaign “is clearly a public health issue when it comes to addiction, but for decades we have been using our police departments as the tip of the spear in dealing with this public health issue,” said Franklin, who now serves as executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, an advocacy group comprising criminal justice professionals.

That spear, he said, has often been pointed toward black communities in inner cities.

(Anima Kahn. “Getting killed by police is a leading cause of death for young black men in America. Los Angeles Times. August 16, 2019.)

It is also clear that police officers’ use of lethal force is much more common than previously thought, and that it varies significantly across the country. Aggressive policing over time can increase local levels of violence and contact with the police.

Then, of course, there is the lightness or darkness of a person's skin and his or her ethnic group to consider. Racism exists in 2020. It is a part of the police community. It is alive, well, and functioning.

Consider this report from 2019:

“Police departments in at least five states are investigating, and in some cases condemning, their officers' social media feeds after the weekend publication (June 2019) of a database that appears to catalog thousands of bigoted or violent posts by active-duty and former cops.”

The posts were uncovered by a team of researchers who spent two years looking at the personal Facebook accounts of police officers from Arizona to Florida. They found officers bashing immigrants and Muslims, promoting racist stereotypes, identifying with right-wing militia groups and, especially, glorifying police brutality. All the posts were public.

(Associated Press. “Research Uncovers Cops' Racist,

Violent Social Media Posts.” June 5, 2019.)

We can be sure that the risks of police violence against people of color are real. It is time to shed light on the problem, accept the horrifying realities of the research, and support changes for equality and justice. Given our fundamental need for proper enforcement, we must protect not only officers of the law but also those whom they serve.

No American should be subject to undue harm from the police. Aggressive police behavior is intolerable. Racial prejudice – in word or in deed – has no place in law enforcement.

“Is it possible for white America to really understand blacks’ distrust of the legal system, their fears of racial profiling and the police, without understanding how cheap a black life was for so long a time in our nation’s history?”

– Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America

Scioto Commissioners Tell DeWine to "Speed Opening Up"

I long for times when leaders were not so assuming, so cock-sure of their understanding of the beliefs of the others, those others whom they swore to represent fairly. I remember days when appealing to their party constituents did not drive their every decision – that was before they made a proclamation of Second Amendment sanctuary and before they drafted letters of opposition to state-regulated measures of safety. Not so very long ago chiefs of our country, our state, and our county recognized the value of respecting opposing opinions and different points of view. I fear those days are gone.

Leaders insisting on making local policy “in the name of county officials” also have a distinct obligation to represent accurately the majority of the taxpayers in the county. They should do so with public consent. These commissioners are paid officials authorized by the state legislature and no more. They are the county government taxing, budgeting, appropriating, and purchasing authorities. They hold title to county property.

Commissioners also have other responsibilities including hearing and ruling on annexations, approving drainage improvements through the petition ditch process, establishing water and sewer districts and making improvements, and providing for solid waste disposal. This work requires no political affirmations.

Now, these Scioto commissioners attempt to manipulate voters while enacting declarations and letters in the name of Scioto County. These measures are power moves calculated to help their reelection. It remains to be seen if their efforts will pay off or backfire. The fact remains that their state “service” has turned decidedly inward representing one preferred faction of the county.

Scioto County Commissioners recently read from a letter they sent to Governor Mike DeWine. The commissioners requested that local communities be allowed to decide the best time to reopen restaurants, salons, gyms, and other businesses.

Commissioner Bryan Davis complained that Governor Dewine’s plan to reopen was not moving fast enough. David said …

“It’s slow. We need to move faster in order to save jobs and businesses. The essential employees have been doing it all along and we haven’t had a massive breakout.”

The letter to DeWine ignited debate about the need of Scioto County to pressure the governor about his plans for the staged reopening of the state in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many citizens of Scioto County do not feel that the commissioners are being responsible in their actions. These patient people trust Governor DeWine and Dr. Acton.

Davis continued …

“(The letter) Asks the governor to move forward with opening up businesses and give more local control over those decisions. We know and have evidence that remaining closed is of greater harm to our businesses and our community.”

No proof of such “greater harm” was offered by the three commissioners who signed the letter. Their action requires scrutiny. People of Scioto County must question their judgment.

What does Ohio say about the authority of county commissioners? It is pretty clear. Here is the explanation:

Ohio County Commissioners CHAPTER 1 BASIC STRUCTURE OF COUNTY GOVERNMENT Latest Revision November, 2002, states …

“County government does not possess home rule authority. That is to say, county officials may act only when and as specifically authorized by state law. An 1857 Supreme Court case established a general theory of the status of counties which is still relevant today. The court stated: 'Counties are local subdivisions of a state, created by the sovereign power of the state, of its own will, without the particular solicitation, consent, or concurrent action of the people who inhabit them.... With scarcely an exception, all powers and functions of the county organization have a direct and exclusive reference to the general policy of the state, and are, in fact, but a branch of the general administration of that policy.”

(Hamilton County v Mighels, OS 109.)

It appears Scioto County commissioners overstep their appointed duties by attempting to defy the the general policy of the state of Ohio. One thing is sure, they have stirred up a hornet's nest of protest against their letter to Governor DeWine. Scioto County has taken to the COVID-19 recommendations and restrictions with the health of everyone in mind. They continue to fight bravely to defeat the virus. But now, a mixed message comes from our own county government.

What are we to think? I remember an important history lesson about taxation without representation. Is there an analogy in that lesson about risk without representation?